On one level, I feel like a lot of Washington pundits who just want to see some sign that the government can function, and a budget deal between Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will be welcome regardless of the details. Yet, the details do matter, and some deals are worse than no deal at all.
Someone pointed out to me the other day that it’s ridiculous to talk about the federal government being broke just because it is in serious debt when it holds massive amounts of wealth in land, minerals, and equipment. A person who owed trillions of dollars to creditors would be unlikely to have 650 million acres of land to sell, let alone the massive stores of military equipment held by the Pentagon.
And, of course, this is how the Republicans want to fund the government. They want to sell off its assets.
There is broad agreement that a portion of the sequester should be replaced with targeted spending cuts. But Democrats demand revenues in the mix and Republicans categorically reject new taxes. So to thread that needle, sources familiar with the negotiations say, Murray and Ryan are weighing revenues in the form of asset sales and government fees, rather than Democrats’ preference for raising revenue by scaling back tax loopholes.
So, because the Republicans cannot agree to raise taxes, even by doing away with senseless tax giveaways, we must sell off the government’s assets. We can certainly afford to do so, at least for a while. But, once we start down that road, it won’t be too long before we really are broke.
This is far worse than no deal. Selling government assets ALWAYS is a loser in the long run. Look at GB and their railways. Looking pretty stupid right about now. Same thing with private hospitals working in conjunction with the NHS.
Terrible idea. Tell them to pound sand.
I agree. When governments sell assets the crony capitalists profit and the taxpayers lose.
Yep. “Crony” is the operative word here. If you think this kind of government asset fire-sale wouldn’t be rigged from top to bottom, you need to read up on Boris Yeltsin’s “loans for shares” scam from 1996.
Exactly what I was going to post.
Agreed. It’s a lousy practice, and one that has been used with a variety of distressed nations undergoing what used to be called “Shock Therapy”: Chile, former Soviet-bloc nations, the so-called PIIGS in the Eurozone, etc. The transfer of public goods to private corporate interests is decades-old now, and amounts to part of an on-going effort to transfer wealth from the people (in this case what was publicly owned) to the CEO class. There is of course a name for the economic and political theory (or perhaps meta-theory) that would advocate such actions – unfortunately to use its name would be considered “lazy” and “pejorative” here, so like Voldemort its name shall not be uttered.
Accounts receivable are considered assets. Republicans aren’t willing to go after the accounts receivable for the people who have parked their money outside the country to avoid payment to the government.
I worry less about the Republicans and more about the Democrats who are buying their line of argument instead of taking the trouble to educate their constituents. It tends to provide the appearance of corruption for Democrats to take that tack.
Democrats have squandered already all of the political momentum they gained from the Republican shutdown and it wasn’t just from the problems with healthcare.gov.
Breaking the filibuster was key to better governance in the Senate. Breaking the Norquist slavery is going to be key to better governance in the House.
I’m hoping for a chance to buy the Grand Canyon.
Maybe a few of us should get together and buy it. Otherwise, I think that’s what the oligarchs have in mind vis a vis desirable gov assests [also Yellowstone which they’ll probably make into a power station]
I’ll bet the collectors are eying the National Gallery too.
They want to sell the patrimony, the cultural and social institutions and organizations generations have worked to build with the intent of benefiting the following generations. And now they want to give that wealth to the rich for a pittance. See the British Royal Mail: curiously it made a massive profit just after it was given away on the London stock market. Some coincidence! It’s disgusting that the Democrats even consider the proposal. But then Obama refuses to go down that road: too confrontational and committed. Expect Iran diplomacy to collapse after the first slight embarrassment, letting in the screeching vultures of violence (drones if not total war).
Schwarzenegger tried to do this in California, but Jerry Brown was able to reverse some of it. Utterly foolhardy. In some cases, they were going to sell buildings that were almost paid off in order to put govt employees in other buildings where the state would pay rent indefinitely.
Thought that Schwartz and his buddies were aiming to pick up CA beachfront property when he put that on the auction block. Guess that one was too big a leap during his short tenure and a DEM legislature.
did they try to privatize beachfront [all is now public access in CA I understand]
No they didn’t. And I’m guessing it was on their wish list. That public access to all beaches was one of those socialist things from the 1960s. And Malibu residents hate it.
Had a relative that held onto to her beachfront property and business for decades expecting it to be worth a mint someday. That “fair value” when it became public property wasn’t what she’d had in mind.
Well, your relative contributed to the public good [probably that didn’t comfort her though]. I saw an article about the Malibu residents once. good that beach access survived the Schwartzenegger years
She wasn’t a wealthy woman and continued cleaning the motel rooms far into her seventies. The property provided a living for her and her husband, but as a long-term property investment even without eminent domain, it wasn’t astute. But she undoubtedly blamed eminent domain when she was forced to sell a couple of years before she died.
CA does NOT have public access to all beaches. There’s been an argument recently in San Mateo cty and IIRC the judge ruled for the landowner.
I’m pretty sure that in Oregon it’s true that ALL beaches are public land.
Yes it does. Why California Beaches Are Open To Everyone.
I don’t know what to think about the idea other than it should only be done very cautiously and what does the portfolio of assets look like. I’m inclined to believe that many assets are about protecting environment. I wouldn’t mind selling off some military bases in some selected states.
Some assets could be revenue producing. And the idea of selling those only reminds me of Chicago’s Richie Daley and his big fail on that regard. He set up 99 year leases to private concerns and spent the whole proceeds thus reducing revenue in following years.
But I think we all know how “sale of assets” works for corporate donors of Republicans.
This has been the first principle of “free-market” libertarianism since the English reformation. It was formulated by John Locke, who explained in his theory of property why things are always better managed by the profit motive. It is the first principle of libertarianism.
http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr05.htm
Locke’s labor theory of value (not original to him) is essentially true, but one-sided (minimizing God’s part in renewable creation, i.e. Nature). Major sophistry comes when he equates capital with labor. (Since capital owns labor, (hires: temporary ownership), it is relevant to point out that labor of the slave belongs to the owner.)
The ultimate source of all material value is Nature, but nature has no role, or rather, a negative role, in Locke’s theory. He expressly states that the value of nature in an undisturbed state is virtually nothing compared to its exchange value, and therefore it is imprudent and wasteful not to exploit it:
“Sec. 40. Nor is it so strange, as perhaps before consideration it may appear, that the property of labour should be able to over-balance the community of land: for it is labour indeed that puts the difference of value on every thing; and let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth useful to the life of man nine tenths are the effects of labour: nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expences about them, what in them is purely owing to nature, and what to labour, we shall find, that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour.
Sec. 41. There cannot be a clearer demonstration of any thing, than several nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land, and poor in all the comforts of life; whom nature having furnished as liberally as any other people, with the materials of plenty, i.e. a fruitful soil, apt to produce in abundance, what might serve for food, raiment, and delight; yet for want of improving it by labour, have not one hundredth part of the conveniencies we enjoy: and a king of a large and fruitful territory there, feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day-labourer in England.”
Locke’s theory of the right to dispossess the Indians is in essence THE SAME THEORY as the right to dispossess everyone who is not a “man of power”. And then, remember, Indian lands first became federal lands. This battle has been going on in the west since the Teapot Dome scandal of he 1920s and even earlier.
The idea of the common good and the public trust is the essence of government. It has NO essential connection with socialism. It goes back to the beginnings of human civilization.
So while I completely agree with this post, I would emphasize that there is more at stake than simply money. First, the Republicans WANT us to have a huge debt, precisely so they can justify selling off the public trust. That’s why when they are in power they always spend freely and lower taxes. That’s also why, in the finest sociopathic style, they exaggerate and misrepresent the state of the debt, hoping to create panic and a stampede. As you said the other day in a related connection, it’s in their DNA.
Second, what is really at stake is the present and future well-being of the country. The productive value of air, of water, of renewable an non-renewable resources, and ALL public services now and future, is simply incalculable. But this common good they view simply as an “encroachment” on their private rights.
Selling off the “commons” has been going on for decades. It’s what privatization and outsourcing of public services is all about. It’s what all the sale/leaseback of public buildings is about.
How is a government funded and operated website that directs people to private health insurance companies (including Medicaid in some states and S-Chip) any different than selling the collection in the National Gallery or a National Park?
So, who thinks Obama will go along with this to get his precious deal?
Note: This is short term.
Treason is what it is.
Drop the euphemisms.